1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of cosmetics, especially in the area of cosmetic eyebrow treatments, and more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to an eyebrow stamp for enhancing the attractiveness of a face by efficiently applying a cosmetic composition of a desired color in a desired eyebrow shape to the eyebrow area.
2. Description of the Prior Art
From the early Japanese geishas, the ancient Romans, and the Bronze Age Egyptians to the modern fashion-conscious woman, cosmetic coloring compositions have been applied to eyebrows to enhance the face. While in ancient times, kohl (a black pigment made from soot or antimony mixed with other ingredients) or a green pigment (malachite, an oxide of copper) were used to manually darken and to shape the eyebrows, today extruded or molded pencils composed of oils, esters, silicones, high melting point triglycerides, stearic acid, synthetic waxes, and colorants are conventionally used.
The great attention paid to the eyebrow is due to the pronounced effect that the eyebrow shape and color has on the overall facial appearance. Not only do current fashion ideals often favor a particular eyebrow style or shape, even the temperament or personality of a person is often perceived differently depending on the eyebrow characteristics. For example, a very light, thin, and indistinct eyebrow may incline the observer to label the person as weak, while a strong, defined, arched eyebrow tends to imply a more assertive personality.
While excellent brows can dramatically enhance the whole face, any one of a variety of circumstances may occur that will result in unsatisfactory or inadequate eyebrows. Over plucking or over tweezing may lead to misshapen eyebrows. With age the eyebrows often grow unruly or become gray and lighter. Fair skinned people with light hair may have extremely light eyebrows that cannot be seen. Also, various medical conditions and treatments may cause the loss of the eyebrow hair.
To address the problem of unsatisfactory eyebrows, generally an eyebrow pencil is used in a free-hand manner to apply a cosmetic coloring composition to attempt to achieve the desired style, to darken and define light eyebrows, to shape eyebrows, to fill in sparse eyebrows, or to compensate for graying eyebrows.
Yet using an eyebrow pencil is not only time consuming, it is also difficult to achieve the desired eyebrow shape, difficult to apply the color with strokes duplicating natural eyebrow hair thickness and positioning, difficult to achieve a symmetrical stoke application on both the right and left eyebrows, and difficult to position the enhanced eyebrows. Therefore, to facilitate the use of the eyebrow pencil, eyebrow templates have been developed. Generally an eyebrow template consists of a device to be positioned over the eyebrow area which has two openings in the desired eyebrow shape. The eyebrow template provides a guide or pattern to allow the user to manually apply the coloring composition of the eyebrow pencil. Such templates may be formed as cut-outs in a band positioned around the forehead with the cut-outs located over the desired eyebrow location. Thus, while a template provides some benefit by showing a desired eyebrow shape, the numerous eyebrow pencil strokes required are still time consuming, symmetry is still hard to achieve, and it is still difficult to apply the color with strokes duplicating natural eyebrow hair thickness and positioning. Additionally, precise positioning is problematic due to the fact that the placement of the band around the forehead obscures part of the face. For optimum positioning of the eyebrow, the user needs to be able to view the entire face, as slight variations in eyebrow positioning are aesthetically significant.
One eyebrow stamp is currently available which attempts to address the problems of time consuming application and of attempting to achieve a natural-looking eyebrow style, placement, and symmetry. The eyebrow stamp currently available consists of a rectangular, transparent acrylic block slightly larger than an eyebrow onto which an eyebrow-shaped polymer design is manually attached and carefully positioned. In use, the eyebrow-shaped polymer design is pressed against an ink pad and then pressed onto the eyebrow area of the first eyebrow. Then the polymer design is removed from the acrylic block, attached in a proper position to the opposite side of the acrylic block, re-inked, and applied to the opposite eyebrow area. While this currently available stamp does save some time by removing the need to individually apply hair-like strokes with an eyebrow pencil to imitate natural hair, it suffers from the disadvantage of requiring significant time to position and to attach the polymer eyebrow design to each side of the acrylic block. Additional time may be needed for cleaning between the first and the second eyebrow applications if ink or color from the first eyebrow remains on the transparent acrylic block, thus obscuring the placement view. Furthermore, the rectangular acrylic block requires support from both hands of the user when positioning the polymer eyebrow design in the correct application position, thus parts of the face are obscured by both hands and optimum aesthetic positioning is difficult to achieve.
It would be advantageous to provide an easy to use device which would address the problems of the application of coloring to the eyebrow area in a time-efficient manner, while allowing the user to more fully view the entire face to appraise the effect of the variations of eyebrow placement and to provide for optimal positioning of the eyebrow for the look and style desired.
Accordingly, there is an established need for an eyebrow stamp that is capable of efficiently applying a cosmetic composition of a desired color in a desired eyebrow shape to the eyebrow area while reducing application time, increasing ease of application, and increasing the visibility of the face to allow for precise aesthetic positioning of the applied eyebrow-shaped color.